Bad Beige Moments

Llora!
Hiberno Llorando
Llora!
Llorando al Primero
Llorando Llorando
Llorando Murio


What particular shade of shit do I feel like I’m eating now?

My fingers, heavy, I drag across the keyboard.

I really feel very bad.
(speaking of which where my Necks CD?)

Bits of me are dying. This feels like death, grief, hell.

I need to sob
With who? Where?

Another fucker told me I look fabulous tonight.

I feel

Fucking terrible

And yet I cope, have coped, will cope.

Today in the shower I flirted with a brief hysteria – maybe there’s something biological in all this? Like some cancer or some nice medical condition. Pack it up and give it a label that takes it out of me, out of my control to face, hold and heal from it.

People break up from seven and half year relationships all the time with no side effects, right?

Sometimes when things are really bad, all you can do is shut down, curl up and cry.

Fuck her fuck her fuck her for doing this to me..

May she endure a million poxy curses on her soul. Please let her rot in some hell of her own making

Please let it be far away from me so I don’t have to notice, remember, suffer.

Make this pain end soon. Make me stronger.

Writing this, imagine wild happy music, crazy screeching trumpets, funky rhythms, and nasal Habanero accent singing:

Llorando!
Siempre ta boca me dice
milonga murio

Ok my Spanish is still shit.

Crazy fucking baroque trumpets up and down,
Bold as brass
Musical screams orchestrated drowning out my internal sobs

This is why I love mambo

And the lyrics?

Cry!
Winter Crying
Cry!
Crying until Spring
Cry!
Crying Crying
Crying to death

Crying!
Always your mouth says to me
Death Milonga

Remember this is damn uppity dance music (got the CD off my salsa dancing flatmate)
And picture an old gym in Sydenham full of glammed up thirty somethings swinging their hips gleefully to the lyrics.
They don’t know what they mean.
Or do they?

Life is too damn sweet sometimes – and I think dancing is a fucking great alternative to crying – but it ain’t too far separated from it either.

For the first 3 years after my brother died, I couldn’t listen to any sort of trumpet music. Even now Miles and Thelonious are pretty touchy.

What took me back?
Mambo!

Extreme sports trumpet

The kind that grabs you like a small child yelling happily in your face – no room for tears – this is life!

Grief, all grief is the slow creep of death. Death is life’s dark silent shadow – that sometimes sneaks its nasty fingers round our insides. My insides at present.

Coming from an anally retentive acculturated ethnicity of beige, it’s pretty hard to know what the fuck to do about it really.

Stiff upper lip, hold yourself straight (hah!), make jokes, get pissed, but not too pissed right? Drag yourself round like some carapace of tragedy for a bit – but not too long right – people don’t really know what to say, and they get bored fast.

Make it entertaining

Make it pass.

I don’t know what answers there are in hell world; it’s sad, slow bitter misery.

There are always advantages to acute pain. The bad beige ditties of Huey Luis have at least ebbed away and the let the tide of poorly translated Spanish fragments take their place.

Bits of French dribble out of me too. Miss it miss it miss it. It’s gone.

There’s no aphrodisiac…….

It’s a cheesy line from a Whitlam's song. I heard it in the op-shop at Bathurst, and had to leave. Fuck, I think I was one of my heart-break tunes last century some time.

Now I can’t get it out of my head. At least it makes a change from Huey fucking Luis. Like I said, my unconscious is incredibly banal. Maybe I shouldn’t be so down on Jung. Maybe there is a collective unconscious and deep down, my psyche taps into the contemporary zeitgeist. Painfully banal vapid shit.

Right now things are decently civil between Abel and I and you know, we could live like this forever, right? My stomach is so knotted that I can barely breathe. I just had one of those desperate phone calls from another Saphhist in distress. Being dumped on badly by fiercely freedom loving bitch. Some women merit the name. Her particular emotional abortion is much uglier, much messier than my sweet sad little corner of heartbreak. Fur flying, blood flowing and custody battles over the sex toys. (We’ve wordlessly decided on a basic split: I keep Bruce the star of Slit N0. 2, and she keeps Jason the Golden Phallus I think her share is worth double mine – but I reckon I need an excuse to go shopping for spanking shiny new toys so I’m not gonna cry over this one too much. I just want my Johnny Cash CD’s back. )

I digress. At least being an auntie to my friends agony, provides a nice operatic release for my own repressed dead feelings. I had a shiatsu from a friend tonight and started sobbing in his arms. It was a nice solid weep – and my appetite returned enough for us to have dinner afterwards. I got home and it knotted up again. I can’t cry, I just feel like shit. I long dark smeary smelly turd of rejection. A flabby, sad, zitty, uncoordinated, poor postured, pigeon toed, myopic, neurotic, fashion challenged, overtalking, socially challenged, insecure, poxy piece of poo. I don’t feel strong at all. Just sad.

This civility it like a slow suffocating death. I think Abel expected a hug the other night, after our first civil conversation in over a month. I nearly obliged, and while masturbating later, sneakily indulged my nostalgic fantasies for her pink bits. Bad habits are hard to break. Our fingers met as we moved a filing cabinet into my room. We moved furniture together, how sweet. We have meetings together, talk sensibly and seriously and argue for the same points. We run a gallery together, did you know? We are hosting an exhibition opening tomorrow night. What a couple! How civilised! People say I’m doing so well. They say ‘you look great, you look relaxed, you’re so calm’.

Not very deep down I feel like I’m dying. I want to scream at her and wring her neck, and my right hand involuntary twitches with a very fierce longing to ram my fist into her face. I keep a tight lid on myself. My stomach hardens and hollows itself into its own little hell. Grief has moved down off my chest and deep inside my guts. Grief, horrible horrible horrible. And now the hardness is hollowing down into that nasty little abyss of gloom and self loathing. I know this dull ache of inner despair. This is the thing that I’ve been running from, trying to be perky and manic and uppity and libidinous and cool and coping. I imagined, still imagine myself as a singular solid white column of bling. A hard glowing surface that repels all fear, dread, inertia and terror. Hard, flashing and brittle, but hard. Not the soggy Elvis contoured couch potato, no longer hiding a soppy smile of contentment. She’s dead. Abel killed her, and I’ve buried her somewhere with the last time tams packet wrapper.

Autumn has arrived in Sydney. I strode up king street today, tear stained eyes shielded by raindrops. Friendly boys offered beers in pubs, which I declined. I had better things to do than find myself suddenly sobbing in a stenching pub, or risk wearing myself down into a sodden state of hosebeast fever. I haven’t even had beers tonight and I’ve already had a fit of the Shane Warne’s. Crossed with Jane Austen. Polite and nicely worded, but hopelessly trashy texts to hopelessly undeserving recipients. Oh GOOOODDDD. During the last festy nasty spirit crushing scraggy hellish heartbreak, I copied out 4 lines of a Robert Lowell poem on four sheets of paper. I used to rearrange them on my wall depending on which particular corner of agony I was feeling that day.

My ill spirit sobs
In each blood cell
My mind’s not right
I myself am hell.

My mind’s not right
My ill spirit sobs
In each blood cell
I myself am hell.

In each blood cell
My ill spirit sobs
I
myself
am hell.
(My mind’s not right)

I myself am hell.
My mind’s not right
My ill spirit sobs
OH For FUCK’s SAKE STOP!!!

So striding, gasping beneath my sunglasses, worn defiantly under clouds, my mind, my eyes played tricks on me. Each nape of a dark headed boy I imagine was my brother, back from the dead. He’s turning around, turn around, its him, he’s back. No he’s not, you’re dreaming. And then, a swaying lean figure in a cloth clap caught my eye and my stupid brain was convinced it was an old ex, an old, old ex from a long, long time ago. One of those tragic fucking annihilating relationships based on a narcissistic swirl of mutual self loathing. My first love. What a charming child I was! Still, he’s one of the few people who I could imagine losing it with completely. Sobbing, screaming shitting all over the bed, while naked, blind, blind drunk, cursing, screaming coming, wanting to murder and wanting to die and still able to negotiate the niceties of safe sex. Never forget, I’m part of the Post AIDS generation. Needless to say, it wasn’t the ex, and I’m glad, because I really don’t need to go back there just at this point. Particularly as the one thing that keeps me going right now is reminding myself that I’m 35, I’m older and wiser than I used to be, and if I live through this I’ll be older and wiser in the future. Each day, I dream of new tragic fuckers to fuck myself over with. New ways to do even dumber shit than in the past. I’m an eternal optimist really.

Today, feeling sad and stupid and lonely and desperate and very, very confused, I went and bought … ahem…. Err… safe sex materials. And felt more dumb and embarrassed than I ever have in my entire life. Despite preaching (in an irritatingly myopic sort of way) at the FLOSS collective back in the dim dark ‘90’s that 80% of lesbians will accidentally or otherwise have a sexual encounter with a man, so they might as well face up to the fact and not die or breed in the process, I still felt incredibly awkward taking the same measures myself. Cruised around the supermarket to make sure no cute girls were around to see me. Stood back and pretended that I was looking at the toothpaste instead. Reaching forwards and grabbing lube confidently. And then being too embarrassed to pick up each box of…. Err… how would I pick the best condoms to share dildo’s with? And why didn’t I go to the tool shed instead? And I don’t want to read all those scary heterosexist descriptions, and I don’t want to think about semen. So I glimpsed at the one with the sexiest image of a woman, and hid it in my paw as I took it to the counter. Paid and packaged with no dykes in sight. Safe. Then looked at the box and realised that they were ‘extra tight fit’. Fuck! What does this say about me? My sex toys? My expectations of a bedding partner?

It’s not all this tragic. Well, the pathos comes in various shades (lets say they’re all pastel). A flush of pink as I held open the door for that cute stone butch who never meets my eye at uni. She did today. Should I suggest lavender for the Nice Bookish Lesbian? I loitered outside the library anticipating that she’d wander out and I’d get a glimpse. No luck, so I wandered desultorily around the campus, striking up random conversations with the fairer sex as the sun set and the bats swirled overhead. Lets call them Naples yellow and say minty green for that nice flirty player I ran into and wandered uselessly with. She reminds me of some boy I knew in the Bosch building. He’d could stretch a flirty pointless derive for hours, but then he also had access to amphetamines. Post pointless but pleasant minty green, I popped into the house of tomes for a quick piss before a class, and I saw the Nice Bookish Lesbian. At this point I have a terrible confession. Whenever I think of her, a Huey Luis song comes into my head. It’s a very bad sign. Well a good one, a healthy one, I have a healthy response to a winning smile, but incurably bad taste in music. I saw her and we chatted and flirted and she gave me some great advice, and she’s made my week. Just seeing her, and being so open and innocent and flirty and sweet.

I dream, of course, about falling into the loving lustful embrace of some mature amazing woman. NBL is an entirely appropriate and worthy target of such dreams, but they are only dreams. Some people slide effortlessly from one relationship to another, without the hellbitch grind of slow single self reconstruction. Like Abel. Bitch! But if they’re anything like Abel, they slide from one set of failures into another set of similar failures and self delusions. Imagine being able to call someone else a fat frigid fuckup and then fuck them off for someone else without a backward glance? No wonder she drinks. I wonder how long before the SLUT – being eloquently reassured of her youthfulness by the willing words of Abel, will find herself being accused of being overprotective, domineering, demanding, motherly, too old?

I’ve barely let myself grieve for the end of Abel. Partly because she’s still here. (any ideas anyone?). No wonder she’s being civil. I don’t know how to respond and I don’t know what to do. I’ve tidied my room, (I still can’t find my favourite shoes), and I’m trying to make this part into my space, somewhere safe, secure, functional. I avoid the rest of the house. I don’t know what to do there. Fuck, I don’t know what to do. I just have to live, keep going, don’t lose my temper, don’t lose my mind. Try to weep in the arms of nice people and take care of myself. Like John Bobbit's penis. A dumb amputated thing that I hope can survive long enough to get grafted back onto someone, and then have a great career in porn! My mind’s not right. It’s time for bed. Alone

Plagiarism: the Passion of the Nugent

I've pulled this from the Nugent Online Experience: The Circle of Trust.

Damo set up a RIVAL student newspaper where we were at artschool together, and he hired a tux and broght a slab to my nuptials, and he converted me to Johnny Cash, so I gotta lot of respect for the guy. I'm trying to fix my comments section - so please feel free to try and post any comments below, or let me know if you wanna sign up for the circle of trust!

The Passion of the Nugent - a true story of endurance, stamina and dollars through three days of Rock, Races, Rugby requiring repeated elbow exercises.

Lo behold, on the Friday evening the Nugent did attend the public house where he imbibed with the one whose surname is Josephs. Thereupon they fixed on attending a concert and under a brilliant full moon did taxi cross the bridge to Milsons Point. There The Darkness came over Luna Park and Black Sabbath T-shirts did abound and all man called each other dude. And dude did they rock! And the Nugent and Josephs ascended above the gathered throng to the bar whereupon they consumed VB from cans and the mosh pit was awash with fans and the lead singer Justin Hawkins did astride a bouncer's shoulders and move through the crowd playing his guitar. And there was much screaming and the people cried "Darkness! Darkness! Darkness!" And the soaring falsetto did raise the roof. Thereafter the Nugent and Josephs traversed to the afterparty at Ruby Rabbits, whereupon two young policemen with nothing better to do, closed things down just before the band arrived as it was Good Friday and due Sydney's antiquated licensing laws they decided to roll up the footpath at midnight. And the Nugent said "Forgive them for they know not what they do." And the nightclub was empty and nothing was open and a great sadness fell upon the land.

On the second day, the Nugent arose early, watching Rage, enjoying immensely the Kanye West video before being collected by the one called Donnelly in a taxi, thereby making it to Royal Randwick at the eleventh hour in time for the first race and acquiring a table on the grass in the members. And Sydney was bathed in beautiful Autumn light and Randwick was packed with fifty thousand punters and alcohol did flow like water. And the Nugent and disciples sat in the sun pretending to be Sydney's wealthiest people despite him only having one win. And the Nugent said "Whose shout on the wine and beer? Buy this round in memory of me." Thereupon, with the last race over the party decamped to the Paddington Inn, wherefore more amber fluid was consumed in accordance with the Online Experience that states; "Excess is the minimisation of moderation". Later the Nugent did find himself doing shots and still later he was arguing with some clown about international geopolitics and so he did initiate the homing sequence at an ungodly hour and descended to his mattress in what became known as the harrowing of the blanket show.

On the third day, the Nugent rose again and was telephoned by Donnelly saying he was in Darlinghurst still going strong. So the Nugent cabbed it to thy Gaslight and Donnelly in yesterday's suit sans necktie was a mess. Describing a mysterious third man, and with eyelids drooping, Donnelly maintained an ethereal trance. So the Nugent did put two vodka red bulls in him, one cup of coffee and some beers. Henceforth they revisited the Paddington Inn to rendezvous with all and sundry by the fifth hour. There they did play pool, although Donnelly was hopeless and the Nugent was forced to move the balls around in supernatural fashion to keep the table. Acquiring Phelan and later the Tan Man, the group departed for the Rugby. And the game was good and the evening very pleasant. And Donnelly did sleep. As the Brumbies fans grew quiet it became necessary to offer repeated verbal interjections deriding their journey home through smog filled M5 tunnel and much mirth was enjoyed by all. And the Waratahs soundly trounced the Brumbies. Then the assembled walked to the Gaslight where more beer was consumed and new people talked to and everyone danced to MC Hammer. Some point after midnight the bar did shut. The Nugent then moved onto the Courthouse with freshly acquired friends who at his instigation, began waltzing around the Judgement Bar. And soon everyone was dancing. Until the besuited goons who spend all day gymning decided too much fun was being had and put an end to the mischief. Upon the cock crowing three times the Nugent did vouchsafe a cab fare home for thirty pieces of silver and he was mentally and physically exhausted and slept. And scripture stating he would attend the Rock, Races and Rugby all within three days was fulfilled. And there was much rejoicing.

Nugent Online Experience - The Circle of Trust

Nostalgia

I've gotta go over to the con and update my tango collection.

It is likely that Arlene Textaqueen is the only person who could possibly understand the following lyrics - to my favourite breakup song......

"Quiero, emborachar mi corazon
Porque mi vida est un infierno
Para amor est un suffrir....."

and she'd also correct my now abjectly shithouse spanish.

but anyway - the song as I know it is sung by a sexy argentinian woman Lucia Vergara??? and the tune is kind of like Gardel ditty "Maria! Cuando las ombras de mi pieze...."

only much better, and the lyrics are........

"I want to make my heart drunk
My life is a hell
Why is it that to love is to suffer?"

Like, that sooooo shits on The Smiths!!!

Mind you finnish tango, isn't very far - with the 4 lyrics I know to one song - being the story of my broken heart - or the seduction away of my beloved Abel by the twin forces of Slut and Tinkerbell.......

"You stole my sanity
And made me your slave!
I thought it was forever
but for you, it was only a game!"

Wayyyy cool. And I recorded a tiny bit under an arctic sun during the Finnish Snow Tango Competition ion Tampere this year..... 5 days after St. Valentines day, Sob!

Anyway, I segue. (wanky academic word for digress)

Nostalgia - is the name of the Argentinian Tango about drunken hearts. I've gotta get to Buenos Aires one of these days........

and nostalgia is the theme of this posting, coz I'm steeeped in it.

I dunno if I posted the sotry of MY WEDDING on this post. Most people know about it. Abel and I had a cult wedding in 2001 - coz we needed to get "Ten Photos of both of you with family and friends" and we didn't have any and decided that a big wedding would be the best way to score some.

We plotted the whole thing in "the Shamrock" a squat on Wilson street - that after 5 years is only now just being emptied and renovated for use by its owner, and we scavenged some of the wine undestroyed by some fire..... and toasted our union with what Abel still raves about as the best wine she's ever had in her whole life: a 1975 D'Arenberg Shiraz.... that was like nectar..... a thick rick sweet honey - so all those hard old aussie solid mineral fugs had been warmed and mellowed into something really really incredible.

The plot was undertaken with our old squatting friends from the Wattle street biscuit; Father Stan and Sister Joan. They had been going out at the time - and decided to describe their relationship as some sort of sex cult: New Orders Of Flesh, or NOOF. so we had a NOOF Wedding. We even had a pulpit with NOOF in Neon glasswear, under a big purple elvis heart. Abel did the full meringe and Father stan lent me his 3-piece white polyester suit, and I stitched exquisite white vulvas on everything I could find - including a white satin stetson.

IN terms of media coverage - we had it pretty cool. there's a video disk somewhere of the whole event, and one friend even broadcast bits of it on 2SER's ARTICHOKE. We also had Tamara Dean, herald photographer to take the photos - but I never saw a single one and if you think I'm ever going to ever forgive her for that, remember I'm FUCKING IRISH CATHOLIC. we don't forgive; we kneecap! Fortunately I gave my film loaded SLR to another, then herald journalist, who took lots a photos and returned the object to me - whihc enabled me to get some photos for Ruddocks department. We even had a wedding artist: arleene Textaqueen - who recorded the whole thing in Artline markers, and did a wedding protrait afterwards. It think it was in Primavera the following year........

Having a lesbian 'marriage' is kind of odd. Because you get lots of people asking you seemingly politicaly approporiate questions about what quasi pagan new age wicca rituals you might be trying to reclaim. I was all for reclaiming RSL syle buffets, but we had a lot of vegan friends. Abel was into subverting her islamic heritage and so did an braised piglet terrine - all made from vegan substitutes died in rainbow colours. Father stan was into bloddletting and strangulation, so we had to incorporate that somehow. We did. Even thoguh I'm a squeamish wimp whose idea of bloodsports is throwing a used tampon into a wastepaper basket. sister Joan got on her hmedical festish gear and extracted blood form each of us which was then combined in some 1970's FOSSEY's short stemmed prawn cocktail glass. we then dipped saveloys in it and did that romantic arm twining thing as we placed our blood soked sausages in each other's mouths. Abel was into splashing the blood combo over the guests - but I persuaded thatit would be more polite just to ivite people to do a kind of saveloy eucharist experience wiht our blood. they all declined. wimps!

anwya - that's a long way of getting to another little segue (a real one this time) which is that Abel was encased in the meringue outfit: 4-foot train, legomutton stleeve,s court shoes, long veil and green wig - and felt blody trapped. she's not a femme at the best of times - her family all tells the same story aobutthe lasttime they saw her in a dress sometime in the early 1990's. So after washing down the blood with a bit of greater western sparkling brut (acutally it might have been seppelt). she stripped down to flouro striped bike shorts, a singlet and her newly bleached hair. (this was a surprise that our neighbour Rita had performed that morning; hiding anna away while I stormed around looking for tampons). so Abel was a blonde for a bit - and I've still got her 2-tone locks preserved under perspex in our hallway.

After the wedding - we headed off back to France - to spend 3 months sharing her RMI (french version of the dole) and living off her parents hospitality. I should write a scuzzbucket's guide to Paris, but its been done and the scams change each 6 months. Lets just say dumpster diving is a lot easier than here, and if you live in the Banleiu - you used to be able to raid the Poubelles du Gare for unused metro tickets. So we had a way of travelling in Paris (after a 45 minute walk to La Defense) for free! But I alsways feel abit weird when poeple ask If I've been to Pere Lachaise - and I go, err... yeah - to the soup kitchen! Again it was more touristic than real need. Abels parents had a great garden - and we also headed off to Belle Ile to live off scavenged seafood, mushrooms and chestnuts for a month.

anyway - in Belle Ile, we had this weird thing as abels' roots started to show and her curly 20-tone locks, started to look liek one of those 1980's style 'highlighted' hairdos - whith flicks goign everywhere. In short, with her slender frame, dark eyes and retro hair she looked uncannily like one of my old schoolfriends . Even though I come home usually once a year -and try to keep in touch, and I'm out to my friends and family and even had school firends a the 'wedding' - I have lost contact with quite a few people - including this friend - who left shcool after year 10 and moved to brisbane to beocm a hairdresser. And acutally I think the way I coped (and cope) with the heterosexist shell of the outer world, is that there are zones where I refuse to consider the possibility of sexual interesction. It's not possible in GLen Anus, not in the coutry, not within a family, not whtin a workplace, not among flatmates, not for straight idenitified female firends. I just don't let myself even half imagine the possibility of anything. so, lying aorudn wiht my lady love -who was looking uncannily like some old firend I used to hang out in the pool with, and also saw naked.... was really weird. I had to close my eyes when we had sex, or ask her to wear a scarf. It was REALLY WEIRD. Like being in bed wiht someone who looks like a cousin or a sibling.

So now, of cours,e I've discovered - as my firneds contact everyone for the year 10 school reunion, that this girl is gay. I heard it yesterday, and I was shocked and really unnerved. And I asked my firned who told me if she felt that weird when I told her that I was gay. she did of course. I remember discussing it with her 16 years ago in Mum's loungeroom. It was july and we were lying on the loungeroom floor with our legs up against the oil heater. And, she found it very very weird at the time, but - got over it - because she's my friend, and a damn good one - and also I was in a relationship wiht a man at the time - and I stayed in it for a few more years. So it was a non issue really.

So after hearing about the latest saphhic turn, I raed hoem and dug out our old photos fomr 20 and 25 years ago and peered at them, just like in those stupid american movies. Can you tell? And fuck, I hate to say it - but the old queer interpeltation thing........ I don't know where we learn it form, or how.. (I know why) - it was htere. I look at the way I stood, posed and stared with female friends - and I blanche (I WOULDN'T DO THAT NOW! NEVER!) - and I'm looking at my now gay friend and go ... oh God! Of course she's not the only gay in the village. There's another girl too from our year - but she left our shcool in year 6 - and was alwaysa total tomboy, and now she works in the bank and plays indoor cricket. No surprises, but no layers of ambiguity either.

so I'm wondering about how it will be when we meet. Will I do the femme eunuch thing and smile and apologise for not keeping in contact and recount some of the old times? Or will I, should I, look at her, as a mature lesbian looks at another mature lesbian - whihc isn't always a come-on - but it's a polite quiet acknolwedgement. Of sexuality, and christ! these things, however goddamn corney are important.

I remember being in PAris this year and walking into the bar where Abel and I were meeting Slut. and just relaxing as I could stand straight and hide my smil as other women looked me up and donw, and I could look them up and donw in return. and then that joy, dear joy of smiling and laughing in frogese as Slut, at a big table with a bunch of girls smiled and saluted me, (apart from bieng a girfriend stealing, politicaly deluded, fucked up, game playing scum - she is utterly charming!). In the bar, I felt like a human being, a sexual being and a woman with a hole and a hunger and hands, and not some oversized fuckup trying to fit into the stupid fembot mirroring that occurs in the rest of French public space. Its so different to sydney. Because at home, as long as I'm not wearing the stench of semen and stupid shoes, I can get that everywhere. In my street, at the corner shop, at the bus stop, at work, at uni, in the library, on the train, on the bloody plane. everywhere! It's not a begging come on look or a butch posturing -it is just that quiet glance, the eyes, the back, the pelvis, the legs, the corners of the mouth. It says, 'even here, you exist, I exist'. So I'm hoping that my old schoolfrind brings her partner down to the reunion, and that I can give them both that look. It would be the nices and saest thing surely? Otherwise - there's that really rally weird tension that underlies the awkward writing over of the past. Because its always there, that 'when did you know?" 'how did you know?'. Stupid me, screamed it out in our class year book "despite the obvious I am not GAY!!!" - and I've still heard girls saying that at uni, in sydney, where there's no reason to hide, apart from habit.

Sometimes, mostly, I am so glad to be a woman. TO have a sense of my own power, and my own sexuality and not be some scared, awkward angly little girl, overrun with confusing desires, and not sure what to do about them. I've only really felt like this in my 30's, partly when I started to get the right looks from all the nice buthces in the street, but also because I was doign stuff physcially where I had a sens eof my own body and how to hold it and stay inside it. Fucking hell. My bum has congeled onto the seat under me and my knees have gone numb. Time to go for a walk. to stride aroudn this shitbox town and try not to stoop too much. All the women here stoop, and hunch and shrink down, hiding their tits and hearts and hopes from the world. Its very hard not to imitiate. Very hard to be here, and know how to stare correctly. Everyone looks like strangers, but they probably are people that I know, or knew, or that my mum knows. So they and I glimpse at each others faces - weird half recongition flitting aorund our eyes. Unlike bathurst I'm not a stranger where I can shield my eyes from recongnition. And I'm not at home, not in newtown where I know thousands of epople, and know how to, what to, recongrise and acknolwedge in the rest. so I play the femme eunuch, because its safe, and its suitable armour wiht whihc to raid the op shops and search for any treasures. Not that I need any more clothes. But looking at other clothes, trying on things, trying on the old clthes in a coutnry town is to see the hidden worlds of other peoples secret selves. Porno ties, flashy dresses, crazy suits, sexy underwear. I try to imagine WHO HERE WOULD HAVe WORN THAT? AND WHERE? I love the memories, dreams, failures embedded in old clothes, and I love the dream state of women as they finger and fondle the discarded vestments on rakcs before them. time to get out there!

Mondayitis

I feel kinda forlorn........

I wonder how the radio is going and If I'll still ahvea segment when I return to sydney next week.

I wonder if I'll get RSI in the next 7 days.

I wrote a letter to my ex-inlaws - that was nothing like the one below - so don't get scared, anyone. I felt lkindo fo proud of myself - but then my stopmach started perfomring acrobatics, so I walked out to my friend's farm - tohelp the pick grapes.

the grape harvest was finished so I sat around and had lunch and did the washing up and hung out with my friend and her friends and her family. I've met a couple of REALLY great 12 year olds - mainly kids of great friends - who are - just amazing people and now I'm wondering about what I've bene doing with my life for the past 15 years - adn If I'll ever have kids of my own.....

that thought lasted about 30 seconds. I'm not sure if its a genuine dilemma.

I'm still slowly trudgeing through transcription. I don't want to do it at all, but I have no choice. I've got to get some uni grant soon though - or something... maybe I'll even pay people from my own threadbare pocket!!!????

The worst thing is that I still want to interview about 10 other peolpe, well at least 5, anyway. GOOODDDDD!!!!!!

do I really have a spare 70 hours in my life that I want to fill with typing?

will i ever learn to type?

should i get a massage tomorrow?

should i get my teeth scaled and cleaned by my friends husband?

I went to armidale yesterday with mum - and had easter lunch with my aunties uncles and cousins. well some of them. Everyone said I looked wonderful. everyone says that. Maybe they expect me to look as shithouse as I feel. Maybe blonde hair suits me after all.

anyway, bananas on the coast are $2 a kilo - but locally they are about $5 or $6. How fucked is that? My aunti brought up some bananas, avocados, star fruit and monsteria from her garden near coffs harbour.

this is bloody fascinating isn't it? I'd better go have some dinner and get ready for another long boring night in front of the computer. OK mentally interesting, but physically just really gross. god I hate typing!

It was a Good Friday

I went for dinner with an old school friend last night.

Actually I walked out to her farm after spending most of the day glued to this chair transcribing one interview. We a had a great time -and I'm incredibly glad to not be spending our time rehearsing in the EASTER Choir for all the catholic masses that are probably happening this weekend. Her brother in law had givne up beer for lent - but he still ahd some of my friend's husband's wine. It was nice.

Interview transcription is insanely tedius.One hours conversation takes about six hours to transcribe. This is hell. Now I know why oral history is a largely ignored phenomenon. Its such damn hard work, and where do I get the kudos - the big name intellectual credibility from rocking up to people and asking them fairly basic questions? and unlike books, you cna't flip to the right bit you wanna read, and people RARELY answer a questions straight, and andyway - that's not the point of using qualitative mehtodologies. I'm meant to let epopel go around and around and meander, and approach things obliquely.

but its so much work, so slow, and I still dunno how the hell I'm going to right the write sort of tome. (btw I'm punning there). Still want to interview lots more people, wanna find out lots more stuff.

I reckon Simon Le Bon offered the best description of a PhD "I'm on a ride and I wanna get off, but they won't slow down the roundabout". Actually I don't really wanna get off the ride, I'm on a ride, and I do wanna get off, and I do spend a fair amount of time masturbating (it clears my head, promise!), and maybe as a result everything feels like a crazy whirl.

I still haven't writtent to Abel's parents.

the thought of it, makes transcription look like a breeze. I mean what do I write?

(imagine the below in quite bad french with dodgy spelling and all the accents in the wrong place)

To the dear person who I have considered my mother in law for the past 5 years, and my edgy and awkward but otherwise extremly sweet father inlaw.

(well OK the nearest we came to being married - was that christmas day that we dressed up in wedding outfits and ran around all the kitsch tourist monuments and took photos - and of course the cult ceremony we had in Aastralia - where we dipped cocktail sausages in each other's blood. And I know marriage is a fairly vile institution that I don't actualy aspire to, but I don'tknow how esle to describe you as me second family, without using the temrs of 'in-laws', so let me appropriate it.)

Thank you so much for the teatowel that you sent to my mother. I brought it to her this week and she appreciated both very much and sends her warmest thanks and regards to you both.

I am staying with my mother because I cannot stay in my house at the moment. Your daughter has mashed my heart through a cheese grater and doesn't seem to give a shit. In fact, her friend Jenny (who you thought was a bitch and how I wish I'd listened to you) is actually her lover and the object of her infatuation. I don't know when this started, but since I have returned from finland she has made no attempt to hide this painful fact from me. Until one month ago I regarded your daughter as the love of my life and imagined spending the rest of my life with her, so as you would imagine this has come as a bit of a shock. In english we'd call this a kick in the testicles, but as you are probably aware I do not have testicles. It does feel liek a kick in the guts. You will be pleased to hear that I lost 10 kilograms in the past month from the sheer emotional trauma associated with this cataclysm. Unfortunately it is unlikely that you will profit from the aesthetic comfort of viewing me in my svelter frame, and I hope my digestive sydstem will reutrn to normal functioning as soon as possible.

Although she envisaged cohabiting with me for the next two years, while conducting a passionate affair with another woman and even inviting her to stay in her home, I have asked your daughter to move to another house. I hope you do not find this callous, but I really feel I have no other choice. She is in fact returning to France for the July vacation, however I fear that you are not the main reason for her return and doubt if you will see a great deal of her, if her corresopndence and phone calls are anything to go by. Generally I am not a fan of catholicism, but I was wondering if her atheist upbringing had something to do with her moral vacuuity. Maybe there are some aspect sof french cultulre that are impenetrable to anglo saxons. We have a word, that is simliar to the french word for 'get out of my way', and it is used generally to accept responsibility for the bad things that come from our actions, whether they are intentional or not. It is a way of acknolwedgeing the suffering of others and expressing regret for one's involvement in that suffering. using this word usually means that you accept responsibility for trying to make amends for the hurt that you may cause someone and modifying your own behaviour that causes such hurt. Even though our Prime Minister is incapable of using this word, it is something that many poeple in my country do like to use and act upon.

Still I am trying very hard not to be bitter. Even though I don't think I can bear to look at your daughters face for the next six months, I would like in the long term to remain friends with your family. You have all given me so much and I have so many fond memories of you all, and I would hope that we can maintain some sort of regular contact. Especially since I left so many clothes and books and paints behind and I'd like somehow to collect them. Especially the fake fur coat and my Sarah Waters novels. Possibly in time, I may come to forgive your daughter and even wish her well with that ridiculous manipulative alcoholic fickel pretentious old bat that she has spurned me for, all the more so, if she repents and comes grovelling to me wearing nothing but a large amount of your taramasalata. Then, perhaps after a crazed session of make-up sex, I could tell her that I have met the woman if my dreams, and that I would always like to consider her as a dear friend, but nothing more. (I haven't met the woman of my dreams - but if you think I'd take your daughter back - you've gotta be bloody kidding - and besides she deserves some of her own medicine). Maybe this is too much information and I'm sorry if this pains you. at least I've been tactful enough to conceal her alcoholism, because I know how much that would pain you, but really if you could get her into rehab, it might help, but I'm not sure if they have that sort of thing in France.

Anyway, I guess for now this is au revoir. If you ever want to visit this shithole of a country full of cockroaches and mosqitoes and profoundly ignorant rugby freaks, then you are most welcome to stay at both my and my mothers house. This includes everyone in your extended family, who I consider as my own family. Except in the case of a natural disaster, this doesn't include your daughter or any of her paramours. I will always remember and think of all of you with much love, affection and regret that things could not have worked out differently.

yours etc.

OF COURSE I'M NOT BLOOODY SERIOUS!!! but - you get my drift with awkward ambivalent pain. I wonder about the future, about the wall between abel and I. I wonder if I'll ever get my johnny cash CD's back, or that piece of fabric from my friend Steve's wife Jill. I guess the Satie CD's Abel has reclaimed - like the cognac she gave me. And I wonder about all the other shit I left at her parents, and the art materials we were meant to share, and, I've got all the photos, but what about one of the Textaqueen playing card packs? there's a few of my books in her room too - like a Sontag novel, and Pred's hard copy diaries. And how wonder how long it will take before my french is as crap as my spanish, and if I'll ever paint again. Abel is completely capable of never speaking to me ever again, so it will be me who does all the work (comme d'hab) if I ever want anything to do with her again.

Dear god/dog/elvis
please let me get it right next time
please let me find the right girl and keep her. don't let her be a piss head or some emotional crippple or someone incapable of communicating or washing their own clothes. don't let her talk aobut astrology or be a LOTL subscriber.
Help me get over this particular emotional abortion sufficiently so I don't fuck up any more relationships or push someone away. Please don't let me become anymore of an emotional basketcase than I already am. PLease let abel fuck off gently and have a great life far away from me, and maybe grow up enough so that she makes some gesture of adult friendship when the time is right. don't let me die of a broken heart in the meantime. give me the strength to write and to paint and to become passionate and wise and not some bitter freak whose emotional life shrivelled at 35.

yours sincerely
the twatface in the corner

Self Help

When I returned to Australia last month - I was overwhelmed how everything stunk like weird pollen and even the water tasted funny. My nose, ears, throat and eyes felt like they were going to explode. The phenergan wasn't working and I had to wash every skerric of clothing in my wardrobe - and my sheets, and vacuum my room within an inch of its existence, befor eI could relax hive free, non wet eyed and non wheezy.

I've had a similar reaction coming back to mum's. So today I soaked all the pillows and stuck em on the top of the hills hoist to be demited by the extremely intense sun. Ditto for sheets, blankets and my single bed valance - on which that I could still smell my cat's afterbirth. (she had kittens under my bed in 1982).

So I didn't get a lot of work done today. After chastizing mum for cleaning out the vacuum cleaner with the vegetable knife, she snapped back and then I burst into tears. god i'm a fragile nervy freak. Crying was good. Staring at the computer blankly while trying to organise a lit review was not good.

Actually the computer stuff today wasn't much fun at all. the CD rom wouldn't read the audio files on my CD, and refused to install the driver for my flashdrive. Hmmmm - so luckily I've still got lots of the interviews on my mp3 recorder. I've just gotta plug in the earphones and start typing. I'm not looking forward to it, and keep planning little things to get in the way. Like walking the 9kms to one of my mum's friend's farms. And walking the 5kms to one of my schoolfriends farms, and maybe booking in a scale and clean with her dentist husband. and, yeah, like updating all my blogs, and responding to ALL my emails.

Its weird being back home, and kind of reminds me of being back at Abel's parents house. Each house I've felt my movements confined and controlled and had to work out new ways to orient myself in space. At Abel's - well, there's the long froggy lunches - and there's no where to lounge around and read a book (they don't put the central heating on in the loungeroom - so its kind of arctic), and if I try to cook - well, her parents stand over and supervise and discuss everything - and even making coffee is a bit of an interventionist saga, and washing clothes involves another set of complications........ Here, mum has arranged her house to suit her, and has crammed every surface with objects - so finding anything is imposible, and doing anything APART from loungeing around in an immobile state is extremely difficult.

so I keep thinking of Michel Leiris "rules of the Game" - and his little ethnographic journal observations in 'scratches' which is the main one that I read. And I think of Lucazoid in petersham, inventing and discovering various rules and limits - and the possibilities for activity within those rules and limits. So here, walking around, I'm trying NOT to walk up the same street twice, and trying NOT to think about Abel, and trying to plan certain amounts of time on the computer, and online and on my bed, and then seeing what I can do within that....... Actually I thought of far more interesting things than that - but its late and they've fallen out of my head.

On the heartbreak scenario, I'm realising just how sad I am. Sad stressed, edgy. SOmetimes I imagine the great australian chicklit revenge. COmposing crazed vitriol against SLUT and TINKERBELL - the scheming gallic scrags who stole the love of my life - but this is tragic and fucked, and a stupid self deluded denial of the truth. Abel pulled the plug on our relationship in a brutal and nasty way but I certainly wasn't entirely innocent in the decline and fall of our little corner of sapphic coupledom. I'm bossy, bitchy and often remote, and I was to her. I've got a fetishistic obsession with squeezing pimples for which I should probably seek professional help. Instead of snogging and fornivating wildly - I spent NYE torturing Abel with the new Tire Comedon (that's french for a ZIT Squeezer!) that her mum gave me. That was extremely dumb. Abel had a childhood of having her skin pricked and probed and penetrated by doctors - and is the last person on the planet that should possibly have to endure any more suffering under my zealous fingernails.

Maybe I'll join pink sofa dot com and put in personals for non alcoholic zitty large breasted lesbians. Oh god, that reminds me. I made a TERRIBLE mistake of asking a dyke (by email) about her star sign. (I was genuinly curious). she replied by asking where I live. fucking hell. dumb dumb dumb. I'd better email that cute girl from the library before I do something really silly. Like go and hang outside the local INDOOR CRICKET CENTRE where my mum said that the local lesbians hang.

Speaking of blogs - I was going through The Artlife - and they cut and pasted my intensely personal anecdote about the Archies 8 years ago. thank Dog I don't name names, but I blushed anyway. I actually shared a cab with the condom phantom after this years archies - but both of us were sober enough to eliminate any possibilities of any sordid encounters, conscious or otherwise.

I'm actually gnashing my teeth coz of likelihood of missing A) the last gurlesque of the season and B) the visit of my hard drinking heavy flirting friend from the south. while I should be relieved for the sake of my liver, this does not quell the gnashing and grinding of my vagina dentata. the rash on my hand is clearing up and I reckon I'm ready for ladylove. Still, men are so low risk, and low maintenance. But then do I have to start walking around being a public bisexual? Its hard enough being a bespectacled nerdy academic freak, without forcing myself into a position of ostentatiously theorising about one facet of my sexual preferences. And I'm scared that pole dancing is too easy an option and i'll lose courage if I don't keep to the correct batting team. Shit. Must avoid cricket analogies.

After seeing my counsellor last week, I foudn a really trashy self help book for $3 titled "It's called a breakup because its broken". I got it and read it on the train and gagged at the scarey recipes for comfort food. And gagged further at the weird crypto gestalt take no prisoners, accept no responsibility self help mantra. I wish will tregoning was somewhere nearby so I could give it to him and bore him shitless by postulating on the the type of authentic self proposed in such a volume. He's probably not even doing self help books anymore (it was the topic of his thesis at oone stage). According to the breakup book, the 'real you' is a 'superfox', who I think is meant to be some swinging chick from sex & the city. But I like the rules that are kind of set up - like "get out and move - and get really skinny and sexy - but don't beocme anorexic" and "curl up and eat lots of really gross sickening food and weep a lot with your 'breakup buddies' but don't eat too much" and "chuck out lots of your stuff and makeover your flat, your life and your hair, but don't just do it because you wanna win him back" .... my god - so many new ways to hate myself and be even more scared and anxious about what I'm going through. the best bit was the inside fla cover - which had a CHeesorama colour photo of the authors - a happily married couple -who've had terrible breakups - but have since found TRUE LOVE. I won't even start on the heterosexism, dodgy family values,dodgy capitialist comsumer values and compulsory monogamy. Though I kind of like the 'make your breakup into a breakover' bit coz it reminds me just a bit of Bataille's 'eroticism' and the cultural imaginary of consumer campitalism - and the weird libidinous joy from destroying everything you've got and moving on to get more stuff. Romantic love is that great and crazy point where potlach can take over -where a gift economy meets a scarce economy and eveyrone gets to act in a really fucked up manner. I still reckon I wanna blow Abel's $5000 on an orgy with some sex workers. Maybe I'll do it on her birthday.

Hibernating

I've headed over the hills to lck my wounds and work on the tome.

Maybe.

I had a long sad slow talk with mum in the car driving from Armidale. God its so good to have amum sometimes. then I went striding off into the afternoon sun. (not too hot), I walked a lap of the whole tonw's extremities in less than two hours. Striding crazily with tears in my eyes, feeling like I did 18 FUCKING YEARS AGO (OK probably only 17 and a half), after a brusiing horrible hideous sould crushing adolescence.

Fuck I'm so glad I'm over 30 sometimes.

Yesterday I blushed in a tut, when some cute, shy, fairly dumb, but young and extremely cute baby butch dyke was talking... about her bloody buildding design that she'd copied off her friend and that was about as woeful as, well, me.

Todya in the plane I was giving moon eyes to some black glad curvaceiosu chick whose non blonde rots were even worse than mine........

what the FUCK am I doing in the COUNTRY!!!!!

Last night, Mirimba (she who shall be known as angel of light) dragged me out to the korean baths for a sap sauna and scrub.

It was dyke night.
I was having regrowth issues.
i'm not usually a pubic epilator - but I got so desperate masturbating the other week - that I decided that if I changed my pubic hairstle -that I could pretend I was having sex with someone else.

I wonder if I'm the only person in the world this fucking tragic.

anyway, so I had a half regrown muf, and I was stumbling myopically between coke bottles and blindness looking like mole man from the simpsons.How bloody attractive

I gotta go back there. with contact lenses. And different haircuts at both ends.

bloody hell.

Mirimba is planning a fishwyk fest for her houswarming in canberra. Maybe - I'll spend zero money in the country and can splurge on really trashy DVD's. I reckon lesbian zoophilia is my thing. with long pink fingernails.

Oh god. Maybe I'd be better off becoming a born again CHRISTIAN. Well, OK, not me, other people.

Pole Dancing

I've just read an old blog entry from August last year, and I'm feeling righteous.

If I read one from last April (our last break up) I'd probably cry. So I won't.

I need to feel righteous because from what I can tell, Abel is falling into a sodden heap in her room, behind the locked door. Our domestic life consits of quiet exchanges of doors opening and closing. No talking, no looking, no crossing. Yuck. bottle of cognac went missing from my room, she misse dthe coop meeting last night, neighbours said she was trashed on firenday, I glimspsed her on thursday and she was shaking, smelling and late for school. I don't want to know. hope she pulls herself out of it.

so i'm going to hide here at uni till late, visit my neighbour to wathc SHAMELESS, go out for breakfast lunch and dinner tomorrow, go out all day wednesday, get a massage wednesdya night, mayb ein my dreams go out and chase girls on wednesday night, go see a counsellor on thursdya then cathc a train to bathurst and stay wiht my firend steve until sunday, and do lots of stuff on monday and then cathc a plane to mums on tuesday, and maybe in another 3 weeks I'll be even better at being numb and might even be able to do some work.

maybe she'll move out, and I can pretend that just like hiding her photos, tkaing donw our textanudes, taking off the necklace from her mum, I can pretend she doesn't. exist, nothing happened, nothing mattters, its over.

People have been amazing, and I've been a flakey selfish freak. I made a serious attempt with an old friend to plug the hole that's opened up inside of me, and picked someone as completely physically unlike Abel as possible. I can't be with a woman, not yet, they are too close to her, too close to too much nostalgia and loss. My ladylove hand has a rash to remind me. Her body is etched into my pores, her taste is in my tongue still...... I was scared that pole dancing would feel like a betrayal or a degradation. Instead it just felt kind of fun and strange and silly. It didn't plug the hole though, barely touched the sides. I keep eyeing off women - and I rekcon someone big blonde and buxom might just be exotic enough....... I dream on. Walking past the dykon cafe yesterday I didn't get any of the right looks. They could probably smell who I'd been with. Or maybe dykes are that bad, and short skirts don't work.

Another Lonely Night

I'm sitting alone in the postgrad centre at uni. Someone else's book called "how to Get a PhD" stares at me from the shelf above the imac where I'm typing.

I'm not sure if the owner spent valualbe university resources on typing out long rants about their failed love life, but she has just submitted her thesis. i got her a double G&T yesterday......

Last time I broke up with Anna, I spent a whole month writing long and endless ravings about the minutae of my hearbreak. I did heaps of all-nighter sessions in the beige palace of PhD's; I think I updated my dodgy website and maybe even did some uni work.

This year, part of me was hoping that I'd be inspired to do similar sort of home avoidance tactic. However I've spent the past week in a kind of freefallng whirl - running running aimlessly. Visiting lots of friends, having dinner parties, or generla parties, or running off to whatever tiny distraction could drag me out of the house. Random Research Seminars. Anything.

I barely got my pissy little marking done - and even that was only today (did it straight after my coffee - before my brain was awake enought to be distracted). Then as I woke up, the knot in my stomach tightened. My veins started coursing with bile. Hate hate hate. she lives across the hallway. She hides behind her locked door, and writes, dreams, wanks, speaks to some other woman on the other side of the planet, washing down her fantasies with bottles of homebrew and left over wine. She's going back in june. I don't think she's going to move out of home though. I'm madly running around just hoping she will go somewhere at Easter. I gave her a deadline. I've been firm. What else can I do?

If I think any deeper about it it's just horrible. So I skulk in my room, trying to masturbate to the sex worker ads in free newspapers. Or desperately sending sad SMS's to friends (no, not while wanking). At least I'm not eating tim tams, but I can't read, can't sit at the computer, can't find my fucking lace up leather boots! I bet the bitch has got them under her bed. I want my books back. I want to cry. I want to wake up and be in some different reality. The nice one where I had a nice girfriend......

On the bright side, I don't have to deal with her when she's pissed (which I think is often). I don't know who does. I think the neighbours did last night. Last week, I saw her jumper hanging off someone's fence 2 blocks from our house! I took it home and stuck it in the stairwell. today I found her calendar next to the toilet. Saw her flight bookings. Saw that she refers to me in her diary as Marg. That particular version of my name makes me shudder. Dunno why. Yep, OK, Makes it easier to stick her in the hate book.I tthought about throwing her diary donw the toilet or out the window, but then, dunno. the 'do unto others' suspicion. I can't find my bedroom key to lock my door. I think she's got my camera too. She drinks my coffee - and I can't be fucked hiding it from her. I can't eat at home, so he might as well be eating all the veggies I bought.

this is sad, pathetic and trivial, and a bit horrible too. so I should write about the funny stuff: what people have been saying or doing to cheer me up:

A friend from uni invited me around to her place - and gathered a group of some of the brightest and creative people in sydney on the problem of what i should do. No one had any ideas - so I let myself get tipsy and stormed home and screamed at Anna and demanded she return my dictionary and bed sheets. she's kept her door locked ever since.

One teacher from art school invited me around to her studio to paint a friend posing in a FREAKY VOODOO SET UP! (with lots of masks and skeletons)

Another friend has given me some shiatsu massages.

A School friend invited me back to her massive house to drink cognac and watch Mr. & Mrs. Smith and stay in some incredible guest room. I felt like i was in a fancy hotel and the movie gave me nightmares, but hanging out with her was pretty cool. she also wants to take me clubbing - and keeps asking if I'm completely gay now - coz she reckons if i have a fling with a guy that I can meet in a club that it will do me good. About 10 years ago I had sex with people I could't talk to and I'm not sure if I want to repeat the experience. Paradoxically one guy who I found so boring that I nearly somersaulted backwards out of the window - I actually wish now - that I could have talked to more - coz he was really obsessed with architecture and I could probably mine him for some info.

Jane Austen would say that Its a truth universally known that bad conversation can ruin great sex, (being naked in a bed is a pretty full on place to have a failed conversation), whereas good conversation an always distract or comfort you from bad sex.

well I guess there are limits to everything.


The trouble with being in a long term relationship is that in the past decade most of my old flingables have settled down and married. or died. I guess this is the bit about getting older that sucks. I guess its meant to compensate for the feelings of self awarness and self confidence. If I was 10 years younger, this would probably kill me. Where as it is, spending a week involuntarily excreting every morsel of food from both ends f my gastrointestinal tract, getting a weird rash and losing a stone feels like a healthy reaction that will probably pass. And I know that I'll feel like shit for the next 12 months. And that the first time I have decent sex with someone who isn't her I'll brst into tears - which is probably a good reason to only have trashy sex.

Anyway - life as a newly single 25 years old has involved playing maiden aunt to lots of nestlers.

A newly married couple asked me over to have dinner and play their pianola! that was so much fun that I missed out on going to the sly fox and working out how to get laid. I ws having a fire hydrant day and sticking my head out of the bus window at eveyr tight jeaned female specimen within 500 metres....... during "You can't stop the music"I had a bit of a shane warne fit and started texting random poeple wiht lewd suggestions. (Damn that bad regrowth!) fortnuatley my phone ran out of credit before I got too far.....

An engaged couple invited me to their house to have lots of yummy food and really old armagnac - and they asked me to come to hawaii for their wedding.

another couple of newly formed franco-australo sapphic alliance members also asked me for dinner. And then didn't turn up. which was a bit weird. But then we met up later at the mum's house of the australian. the french half lectured me in two languages, insisting that I should move out of home as soon as possible. she's the only person who has said this, and she's french and I've just discovered a new shade of xenophobia. Merde A Les Guines Francaises! Even nice ones that seem to be making my friend really happy.

I've had amazing support from various lovely people around uni that have provided dinner, coffee conversation, drinks and random hugs. I never imagined the sandstone camelot would provide such a safe abode. I think Zoo is a guardian angel in disguise.

anyway - I think I've bored myself into anaesthesia.I'm really happy to get nice comments and practical suggestions for getting ABEL out of the house on a permanent basis. I was thinking of having a really loud long orgy in my bedroom for a week after easter - so if anyone is interested or available let me know. I'd probably want to run away at some point but I reckon people could just continue without me.